Music and musings

Schloss Elmau

Some years back I found myself, for reasons too complicated to explain here, on the banks of the Danube in the lovely town of Ulm, Germany. I stepped off the train lost, exhausted and sick, but within hours I had met so many kind and generous people that my headache and my worries melted away. I thought I would just be passing through but ended up spending 9 days there, playing music and making many wonderful friends.

One man I met was even nice enough to give me a free day at his spa if I agreed to play jazz at his sister’s birthday party. He said he had formerly worked as a masseuse at Schloss Elmau near the Austrian border. When I heard Brad Mehldau’s song of the same name yesterday, I was overwhelmed by warm memories of Ulm. Here is the tune: